Nephilim - 1914 - And a Question.

by MidwichCuckoo 12 Replies latest jw friends

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  MidwichCuckoo

  I was always led to believe that the Flood occurred to rid the Earth of, not only the wicked people, but also the Nephilim (I wonder if Noah ever preached to them......and what if just ONE of them became a dub...sorry, off on a tangent).

  Clearly God created Angels with the ability to take on human form and procreate......fast forward to 1914. Prior to 1914, Satan and His angels had free passage between the Heavens and Earth. In 1914, Christ took His (invisible)Throne in Heaven and cast out Satan and His followers (hence the disruption on Earth - WWI), and Satan is now doing as much damage as possible on Earth where he is resident.

  It is reasonable to conclude (couldn't resist, under_believer) that God did not take away the ABILITY for angels to do this (unless I missed it in the Bible), So WHY then are we not seeing a new breed of Nephilim?
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  Leolaia

  Ironically enough, Jewish tradition in the first century (shared by the NT) held that the Flood did not rid the earth of the evil of the Nephilim. True, they were indeed drowned but because of their semi-divine status as offspring of angels, their spirits lingered on. In the Enochic corpus, their angelic parents, the fallen angels, were seized by Michael the archangel and the other archangels and imprisoned in an abyss under the earth to await Judgment Day (cf. Jude 6, which alludes to 1 Enoch, and 2 Peter 2:4-5 is a rewrite of Jude 6), so the earth was rid of the fallen angels, but not the spirits of the Nephilim.

  In other words, the "demons" and "evil spirits" wandering the earth were believed to be the spirits of the Nephilim who died during the Flood but did not perish. This Enochic notion appears in Tertullian (who regarded 1 Enoch as inspired scripture) and the Pseudo-Clementines, and provides excellent background to such texts as Mark 5. In this passage, the demons inhabit a demon-possessed man and Jesus expells them, but they seek a new host to enter and thus possess a herd of swine. This reflects the notion that the demons lost their original bodies in the Flood (through death by drowning) and continually seek new bodies to inhabit. The angels, in contrast, do have bodies tho of spiritual form (cf. 1 Corinthians 15). After the demons enter the herd of pigs, they fall off a cliff into a lake, drowning themselves. This evokes the earlier fate of the Nephilim during the Flood, experiencing a similar death by drowning.
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  Mysterious

  I think dubs always pitched it that god did take away their ability to do so, but again I'm not sure if that is supported in the bible at all. God wanted mankind, his creation, to be saved. Since the nephilim were half breeds that supposedly came about against his will I doubt noah would have been sent to preach to them. But then again it wouldn't be the first time god discriminated against and people, look at all the tribes the israelites wiped out man, woman, and child.
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  M.J.

  Since the nephilim were half breeds that supposedly came about against his will I doubt noah would have been sent to preach to them. But then again it wouldn't be the first time god discriminated against and people, look at all the tribes the israelites wiped out man, woman, and child.

  Actually, God intended for all mankind to be wiped out, except for Noah and his family. Noah going out to round up more folks, half breeds or not would have broken the covenant God made with him: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/113185/1.ashx
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  DannyBloem

  Well maybe they are among us :) Before I believed that the real reason was to get rid of the angelic DNA. But again why would a angel when taking on a human form, have first his DNA altered, to produce more large violent offstring? Why are the angels sexless and love sex so much? Even willing to take on a lower form for it.... But then it is quite obvious that the remains found by science and are named neanderthalers are infact nefilim.... D B
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  jw

  So WHY then are we not seeing a new breed of Nephilim?

  Certain restrictions are placed upon the angel upon the earth.

  And one of those is no more sex with humans.
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  Stephanus

  And one of those is no more sex with humans.

  Praise the Lord for that!!
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  DannyBloem

  And one of those is no more sex with humans.

  Jw, The question is why god gave it them in the first place and why God created them with the a big sexual desire?
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  Narkissos

  An interesting variant of the etiology of the "evil spirits" (not the fallen angels themselves, as the WT claims, but the spirits/souls of their progeny = the giants / nephilim) is found in the Book of Jubilees, where only the tenth part of them is allowed to remain on the earth after the Flood:

  And in the third week of this jubilee the unclean demons began to lead astray the children of the sons of Noah, and to make to err and destroy them. And the sons of Noah came to Noah their father, and they told him concerning the demons which were leading astray and blinding and slaying his sons' sons. And he prayed before the Lord his God, and said: 'God of the spirits of all flesh, who hast shown mercy unto me And hast saved me and my sons from the waters of the flood, And hast not caused me to perish as Thou didst the sons of perdition; For Thy grace has been great towards me,
  And great has been Thy mercy to my soul;
  Let Thy grace be lift up upon my sons,
  And let not wicked spirits rule over them Lest they should destroy them from the earth. But do Thou bless me and my sons, that we may increase and Multiply and replenish the earth. And Thou knowest how Thy Watchers , the fathers of these spirits, acted in my day: and as for these spirits which are living, imprison them and hold them fast in the place of condemnation, and let them not bring destruction on the sons of thy servant, my God; for these are malignant, and created in order to destroy . And let them not rule over the spirits of the living; for Thou alone canst exercise dominion over them. And let them not have power over the sons of the righteous from henceforth and for evermore.' And the Lord our God bade us to bind all. And the chief of the spirits, Mastema, came and said: 'Lord, Creator, let some of them remain before me, and let them harken to my voice, and do all that I shall say unto them; for if some of them are not left to me, I shall not be able to execute the power of my will on the sons of men; for these are for corruption and leading astray before my judgment, for great is the wickedness of the sons of men.' And He said: Let the tenth part of them remain before him, and let nine parts descend into the place of condemnation.' And one of us He commanded that we should teach Noah all their medicines; for He knew that they would not walk in uprightness, nor strive in righteousness. And we did according to all His words: all the malignant evil ones we bound in the place of condemna tion and a tenth part of them we left that they might be subject before Satan on the earth. And we explained to Noah all the medicines of their diseases, together with their seductions, how he might heal them with herbs of the earth. And Noah wrote down all things in a book as we instructed him concerning every kind of medicine. Thus the evil spirits were precluded from (hurting) the sons of Noah.

  Note that in this perspective the action of evil spirits is not regarded as the cause of human evil but as a punishment for it. Moreover, Mastema / Satan is the chief of the evil spirits (=> presumably himself a former giant's spirit), not a "fallen angel" (this is echoed in the Gospels with the title of "prince of the demons" aka Beelzebul).

  While Jude and 2 Peter in the NT conform to the Enochian scenario, having the "fallen angels" imprisoned in Tartaros until the day of judgement (hence not currently active on earth), Revelation 12 seems to recast the mythemes differently, moving the imprisonment of Satan and his angels (in the abyss) from the Flood to the Christian epoch.
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  Leolaia

  Excellent post, Narkissos.....You've also helped put a number of things in perspective.

  So I wonder if the Society has ever tried to reconcile Jude 6 with their claim that it is the fallen angels, not the spirits of the giants, that wander the earth as demons. If the angels that sinned are imprisoned until Judgment Day, then ... how can they also have possessed people in Jesus' day, never mind getting cast down to earth again in 1914....